‘Yes, very convincing,’ I said in a faltering voice, still edging slowly backwards. I had almost reached the bend. Once there, I would run for it.
‘All right, all right, I am a Troglotroll!’ the creature suddenly yelled. ‘The bane of the Gloombergs! A repulsive, warty, hairy creature with evil intentions! An object of universal loathing! A social outcast!’ The Troglotroll subsided on to his hands and knees and crawled around in front of me, sobbing bitterly. The situation was becoming more and more unpleasant.
‘You may kick me a bit if you like,’ he whimpered, looking up at me with tear-filled eyes. ‘Everyone else does.’
I cautiously approached the Troglotroll and gave him an encouraging pat on the back.
‘Now, now, things could be worse,’ I said consolingly. I promptly regretted having touched him because my palm was smeared with his greasy sweat, which gave off a rancid smell.
‘How would you know?’ he snapped – so brusquely that I shrank back like someone recoiling from a dog that had suddenly displayed signs of rabies.
‘Do you think I chose this life?’ The Troglotroll got to his feet and glared at me. ‘This filthy fur, these warts, this eternal vegetating in dark tunnels devoid of fresh air, deprived of light, destitute of hope? Do you think that’s the career I had in mind for myself?’
It wasn’t easy to devise an encouraging, inoffensive response. I made a surreptitious attempt to wipe my paw on the wall of the tunnel.
‘I’d much rather be a butterfly!’ His voice took on an airy, dainty note. ‘A thing of beauty, fluttering without a care in the sunlight.’ He gave a rather unsuccessful imitation of the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings. I was beginning to feel sorry for him.
‘To exist simply to gladden people’s hearts, to give pleasure – to exist to be good …’ The Troglotroll performed a few clumsy pirouettes, then stopped short and stared gloomily at the ground. ‘Is that such a reprehensible ambition?’
He wasn’t such a bad fellow after all. The rudiments of self-improvement and the intention to achieve it were definitely present.
‘But I’m just a Troglotroll!’ His voice sounded once more as if it came from the depths of a well shaft. ‘The most despicable creature in the history of creation, that’s me! I’m the bitter end!’
He banged his head against the wall. It made a hollow, disagreeable sound.
‘I’d sooner be a cockroach!’ he whimpered. ‘Or a tick. Even bacteria have a better reputation.’
I tried to buck him up. ‘Outward appearances don’t matter. True beauty comes from within.’ I blush, even today, at the banality of my attempt to console him.
‘But that’s just it!’ sobbed the Troglotroll. ‘I’m utterly depraved on the inside as well. Lying and cheating? Acting malicious for no reason and taking pride in it? That’s my forte – that I’m first-class at! Looking for an unscrupulous rogue? I’m your man! But a single good deed? Impossible!’
And then I had an idea which might justly be described as brilliant. I was reminded of the Babbling Billows. They had converged on me with evil intent but turned over a new leaf by teaching me to speak.
‘I’ve had an idea: we’ll kill two birds with one stone. You simply show me the way out! Like that, I’ll escape from this labyrinth and you’ll perform a good deed. It’s the answer to all our problems. Do you know the way out?’
The Troglotroll eyed me mistrustfully.
‘Of course, often been there. Not a nice place, though – too much fresh air, too much light. But I can take you there all right. Sure it’ll help?’
‘A hundred per cent sure. I know people whose lives have been transformed by a good deed.’
I was at least certain that the Troglotroll’s good deed would change my own life for the better.
‘I’m unconvinced,’ he said. ‘But we may as well give it a try.’
A good deed
I could see a change take place in the Troglotroll as he walked on ahead. Having at first shuffled morosely along in front of me, he progressively straightened up. His gait became light and springy, almost balletic.
‘Ak-ak-ak!’ he chuckled. ‘It’s incredible! The nearer we get to the exit, the better I feel. I’m in great form. I feel … how can I put it?’
‘Good?’
‘Good! That’s just the word for it! I feel good!’
‘That’s the reward for your good deed,’ I explained, ‘a clear conscience. It really perks you up.’
‘I think I’m going to change my entire way of life,’ the Troglotroll cried eagerly. ‘I could do so much good. I could come with you – leave the Gloomberg Mountains, go to some impoverished country and help the needy, perform a good deed every day, ak-ak-ak!’
‘That’s a very laudable intention,’ I told him encouragingly. ‘Once you know how the system works, you just can’t stop. It’s like an addiction.’ I was feeling rather proud of myself, I can’t deny. It’s nice to be able to help someone, especially in such a practical way.
‘Absolutely! I can hardly wait to perform my next good deed. I’d never have thought myself capable of such a thing!’
‘You never know till you try.’
‘And you’d really take me with you?’ asked the Troglotroll. ‘On your adventures, I mean.’
‘What gave you that idea?’
‘Well, I thought we might … the two of us together … I mean, out there …’ He broke off.
‘You really want to leave the Gloombergs?’
‘I’d never dare to on my own, but with someone like you – well, that would be another matter.’
I studied the Troglotroll in profile. I was beginning to regret my helpfulness. It certainly wouldn’t be any easier to make my way in real life burdened with a creature like that, but I had to finish what I’d begun.
‘Naturally,’ I said. ‘Of course I’ll take you along.’
The Troglotroll performed a touching little dance of joy in front of me and gave me his hand. I clasped it. It was even more moist and sticky than his back.
We walked for several hours, but still no cave mouth came in sight.
‘Is it very far now?’ I asked.
‘I should say so, ak-ak-ak!’ tittered the Troglotroll, and he darted down a side tunnel.
‘What are you doing?’ I called after him.
‘Leaving you in the lurch!’ he called back out of the darkness.
‘What! Why are you doing this?’
His reply came from very far off. ‘Hard to say. I’m a Troglotroll, that’s all. I can’t help myself.’
He was so far away by now, I could barely hear him. ‘I’ve led you much deeper into the maze. You were quite close to the exit when we met, ak-ak! Ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-aaaak!’
The last I heard of him was his mocking laughter. Then I was alone again. I sat down on the tunnel floor and started laughing too. It wasn’t a very nice laugh – in fact the very sound of it gave me the creeps. If there’s one piece of advice I can give the readers of my autobiography, it’s this: Never trust a Troglotroll!
I’d reached the end of the road, that much was certain. I was utterly exhausted and bereft of hope. All my faith in others (especially Troglotrolls) had been destroyed. I felt at least a hundred lives old. I lay down at an intersection, one that seemed very familiar to me, and promptly fell asleep.
Bad news from a puff of wind
I was roused by a gentle current of air in my ear. I sat up.
‘Hello,’ said a faint voice.
There was no one to be seen.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘Here, right in front of you,’ whispered the voice.
‘I can’t see you.’
‘Nobody can. I’m a puff of wind.’
It was the puff of wind I’d felt several times. I’d never conversed with one before, but I decided to give it a try.
‘Do you know the way out of the Gloombergs? I asked.
‘I’d hardly be flitting around in these stuffy caves if I did,
’ the puff of wind replied. ‘I’d be wafting over the mountains and seas with my brothers and sisters. I’d be propelling the clouds across the sky or brewing up a tremendous storm. I’d be doing something useful, like blowing a ship across the ocean or driving a windmill – anything rather than going to seed in this crazy labyrinth.’
‘How did you get in here?’
‘It was the most disastrous moment in my life, believe me. I curse it to this day! I was sailing over the Gloombergs in glorious, sunny autumn weather, free as air …’
The puff of wind sighed.
‘Then I passed this mountainside here. It was full of caves. I wafted over to them and peered in, wondering what they were like inside … I looked around for a bit, and there you have it – the whole sad story. I’ve been searching for the exit ever since. How did you get in?’
‘My teacher sent me.’
‘Nightingale?’ asked the puff of wind.
‘Yes! How come you know his name?’
‘I’ve come across a lot of people in here who curse his name. Their bones lie scattered everywhere in this labyrinth.’
My blood ran cold.
‘Perhaps we should join forces,’ I said. ‘Two might find the exit quicker than one.’
The puff of wind gave a contemptuous whistle. ‘I doubt it, you’re far too slow. By the time you’d groped your way along a stretch of tunnel, I’d have searched it a hundred times – and I’ve been in this labyrinth for over four thousand years. That’ll give you some idea of your chances, ak-ak-ak!’ The puff of wind’s malicious laughter sounded strangely familiar.
Still cackling, it materialized before my eyes and assumed the shape of a Troglotroll.
‘You must be thinking I’m a Troglotroll,’ it said, ‘but I’m not one at all. I’m just a puff of wind that has temporarily taken on the guise of a Troglotroll. That sounds convincing, doesn’t it?’
I had tensed every muscle, poised to spring at the little gnome and throttle him until he showed me the exit, when the ground started to vibrate.
‘Oh, a tunnelquake,’ remarked the Troglotroll. ‘You’d better dissolve into thin air like me. If you don’t, I can’t vouch for your survival, ak-ak-ak!’
Still cackling, he vanished.
And I woke up.
One thing I hadn’t dreamed: the ground really was shaking badly. I could also hear a frightening noise, a loud, savage, ominous din, an audible threat. It sounded as if something was deliberately and inexorably heading straight for me through the iron mountain. There were sounds of grating and grinding like icebergs colliding, and sometimes I thought I heard a sort of belch, as loud and hollow as if it had been emitted by a dragon at the bottom of a well. Then came a fiery hiss and crackle, and the air became unbearably hot. The wall of the tunnel started to glow like a hotplate, red at first, then yellow and finally white, until it dissolved into a pool of molten iron.
I had to leap aside to prevent my paws being burnt by the stream of metal. The noises died away, and a dense cloud of greasy black vapour came gushing through the hole in the wall. My fear was overridden by my eagerness to know what had caused this spectacle. When the smoke slowly drifted away down the tunnels and became less dense, I was able to make out a figure on the other side of the hole. It was roughly three times my height and made of gleaming metal.
From the
‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’
by Professor Abdullah Nightingale
Mountain Maggot, The. Although its outward appearance renders this hard to believe, the Mountain or Iron Maggot [Vermis montanus] belongs to the same family as the common earthworm, but is much more highly developed. The Mountain Maggot bears a biological resemblance, on the one hand, to the primitive whipworm [Trichocephalus dispar], especially as regards its digestive organs; and, on the other, to the structurally far more complex tube-dwelling worm [Hermella complexiensis]. At a mature stage of development, Mountain Maggots attain roughly the size of a Cloven-Hoofed Steppe Unicorn and are thus Zamonia’s third largest species of worm, surpassed only by the →Lower Zamonian Chalk Leech and the →Midgard Serpent. They live by gnawing their way through the mineral deposits in the Gloomberg Mountains [their only habitat], filtering all the nutrients out of the metal they devour, and digesting them. For this purpose they are equipped with masticatory organs so exceptional that any saurian predator would covet them. The mature Mountain Maggot is also capable of spitting fire like the Firework Dragon of the Brazilian rain forest, to which it is not, however, related, for dragons belong to the nodulodermal family, whereas the Mountain Maggot’s epidermis is so smooth that it looks polished. Its entire body does, in fact, consist of gleaming stainless steel. Its lower jaw is shaped like an excavator shovel edged with sawteeth coated in diamond dust. It has pincers in lieu of hands and steel claws in lieu of feet, and its body terminates in a huge, tapering metal file. The mechanical appearance of the Mountain Maggot has given rise to the belief that it may be of manmade origin and hail from another planet or another dimension. It is more probable that nature has found its own way of defying the hostile environment of the Gloomberg Mountains by countering it with a metallic life form. The Mountain Maggot is probably the strongest creature on our continent relative to its size. In outward appearance, it is one of the most impressive sights Zamonia has to offer, and its potential dangers can only be likened to those of an omnivorous Sabre-Toothed Saurian when robbed of its young.
Professor Nightingale is exaggerating here. The creature that stood before me in a pool of molten iron without even noticing it looked truly fearsome, I grant you. It would be easy for me to embroider a bloodthirsty legend still further and tell how I waged a death-defying battle with the monster, but my lives have been so rich in breathtaking experiences that I’ve no need to contribute to the Zamonian public’s mistaken image of the Mountain Maggot. There is enough ‘literature’ of that sort, books entitled How I Mastered the Mountain Maggot or The Stainless Steel Satan, in which self-styled experts on the Mountain Maggot describe their alleged duels with the creature. The fact is that none of these authors has ever set foot in the Gloombergs, and that all their information about this peaceable creature was acquired at second or third hand, largely from legends passed on by word of mouth or from other, equally worthless books on the subject.
Mountain Maggot, The [cont.]. The origins of the Mountain Maggot are lost in time and cannot be determined with any scientific exactitude. According to one ancient Zamonian legend, the first Mountain Maggots crawled out of the dung excreted by Giant Cyclopses; according to another, they evolved from the tears of the Storm Gods [→Gloomberg Tempest, The]. What is certain, given the present porous condition of the Gloomberg Mountains, is that the earliest Mountain Maggots must have begun to gnaw their way through them hundreds of thousands of years ago. Although no scientific proof of this has yet been adduced, it is surmised that, in addition to its vermicular relationship, the Mountain Maggot has an affinity to the termite. This is suggested by the perforations in the Gloombergs, which are reminiscent of a termites’ nest.
Mountain Maggots are solitary creatures. When two of them meet, as they occasionally do, they tend to ignore each other. One of biology’s great unsolved riddles is how Mountain Maggots reproduce in view of their lack of contact with others of their kind. The answer may lie in another Zamonian legend that tells of ‘the Great Queen,’ a maggot that lives in the interior of the Gloombergs and lays steel eggs from which the infant grubs emerge. There is, however, no scientific confirmation of this.
The Mountain Maggot didn’t notice me at all – or, if it did, no more so than I would have noticed a fly on the wall. It simply went on with its work, marched over to the next tunnel wall, opened its stainless steel jaws, and blew out a jet of flame the thickness of my forepaw. Then it tore off some big chunks of half-molten metal with its pincers, tossed them into its mouth, and noisily swallowed them. Having swiftly made a new hole, the creat
ure climbed through it. I am one of the few to have witnessed the fascinating process whereby a Mountain Maggot makes its way through the Gloomberg Mountains.
The wall of metal melts, and there
a hole comes into sight.
I feel a gentle breath of air
and through the gap streams light.
What was that?
‘Mountain Maggot, The’ [poem]. This seventy-eight-stanza poem by Wilfred the Wordsmith is regarded as the acme of Zamonian organic verse.
Organic verse? Wasn’t that the highest form of Zamonian poetry – one at which so many mediocre poets had failed? Yes, but what did it have to do with the Mountain Maggot?
Organic Verse. In this, the supreme manifestation of Zamonian lyricism, the poet adopts the perspective of an organism which is so rarely found as to escape notice in the normal course of events, e.g. →Reptilian Rescuer, The or →Mountain Maggot, The. Widely regarded as the finest example of organic poetry is the poem →‘Mountain Maggot, The’ by →Wilfred the Wordsmith.
I remembered now: I knew all of Wilfred the Wordsmith’s sonnets by heart, but I’d shirked learning ‘The Mountain Maggot’ because of its immense length.
‘Mountain Maggot, The’ [poem] [cont.]. Wilfred puts himself in the place of a Mountain Maggot and gives a highly detailed account of its laborious journey through ferruginous rock. In the final verse he makes the Maggot find its way out into the open air and thereby lends meaning to its seemingly pointless endeavours. This suggests that the poet intended his rhyming quatrains to be a hymn to a hard-working life and its underlying purpose.
Of course! If anyone could find a way out of the Gloomberg labyrinth, it was a Mountain Maggot. I had only to follow at its stainless steel heels until it melted a wall that led to the open air. Gingerly, I climbed through the hole, which had cooled, and into the next tunnel. By now already one passage further on, the Maggot was burning a hole in the tunnel wall with its blowtorch breath. At last I had a definite chance of escaping from the labyrinth. You can’t beat a good education!